Edited to add: River objects seem to have a limited amount of water to be used in filling containers or drinking. If I remember right, they need to have their quantity values set to -1 to make them an infinite water source.

I wish players in Utterby will realize that in a tolkien setting there are certain standards of cleanliness / manners. If you keep pretending we're playing ARM, the staff are going to be forced to make small world changes to guide RP.

Like the new and somewhat unpopular public kitchen door fee. At least they're gonna be adding an NPC to buy meat back there too.

Maybe someone should write up a general guide about how most people in Middle Earth would behave. Also, what do we think about homosexuality? I think we should allow it, not for myself, but for anyone who wants to. I think that most people in Middle Earth wouldn't even bat an eye, worrying too much about survival. Tolkien doesn't ever mention it, for or against, so I think we have a choice. I personally think in any society, there would be people who would be gay. And remember, Tolkien modeled the place off of England, so...that's almost a nod to it right there.

Homosexuality has never come up in Tolkien's works so I don't think any official judgment would be suitable. To be frank, due to the absence of any references, I think it's best not to force people to react to it. I don't mean to encourage some kind of "don't ask, don't tell" policy in a negative manner, but I think it should probably be treated the same way we (don't) treat gender roles in-game: gloss over it and don't make it a central aspect of your roleplay, because it's guaranteed to clash either with the source material or with the spirit of the game.

As for behaviour, I think it has been largely okay except for the language some people are using. I'd much prefer not to see denizens of Middle-Earth going around spewing "shit, snarfagle, ass" etc., or making direct references to God or hell. It's entirely possible to portray colourful language without resorting to wildly jarring, anachronistic and un-Tolkienesque words. That aside, I think people are embracing the setting well enough.

If we want to start on it, female characters should be lumped into glossing over gender, too, as there really isn't a lot to go on in Tolkein's world. I think a measure of imagination has been required help to fill in that gap, as most female-playing players probably have in all of SoI's long years.

I know it's early, but...player houses! I see the range from small one room hut/cottages with a small hearth, that are easy to build to larger multiple room cabin/farmhouses with large fireplaces/woodstoves that take a lot more resources to build. I see people settling out on the eastern side, once farming is implemented as well as hunters with smokehouses, etc...

I would also like to see build crude-outhouse and a build nice-outhouse.

Last edited by soiacc on Thu Jun 12, 2014 12:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

soiacc wrote:I know it's early, but...player houses! I see the range from small one room hut/cottages with a small hearth, that are easy to build to larger multiple room cabin/farmhouses with large fireplaces/woodstoves that take a lot more resources to build. I see people settling out on the eastern side, once farming is implemented as well as hunters with smokehouses, etc...

Houses are a lot of staff-labor / upkeep.

Atonement had Room Rental code, though, that allowed players to "rent rooms at the Inn" which built a custom, persistent space for the player. A one-room "home" in the Inn with a nice fireplace and a bed would certainly be a worthy thing for some folks to invest in.

I don't see it having to be staff intensive. I think if everything is put into a grid, and each plot of land is set aside, it could work. You could have small plots and large plots. I don't see it being expensive, beyond the materials. Since we're supposed to be settlers and people have brought their families, it makes sense for us to have homes for them and for those who want it. Cottage-small Cabin-small Cabin-Large Farmhouse-Small Farmhouse-Large. You would need to clear land, make the foundation and hearth and then the walls and roof. You could make them like Harshlands, the enterable cottages/houses, if that's too much work. I would make them more realistic though, I didn't like that the room descriptions would be like this place sleeps six, with rooms and blah, but it'd only have the one room. I think they've upgraded them recently, but I haven't seen them. The same could be used for something like the stone enclosures/corrals they have too, for keeping crops and livestock and what not.

ETA: I think the object houses are a better idea, actually. Because it would allow more cabins/cottages in the same room, so you'd see A group of small cabins are set out here, or something and then you'd see...

A $color cabin is here.A $color cabin is here.A $color cabin is here.

The objects would have the same cookie cutter description and then after the only thing that staff might want to do is offer people a chance to change the interior description, which could be done easily by sending in a ticket.

I like the idea Soiacc, but I could see people just dedicating all their time and resources to be 'one of the pc's with their own house' and then just roleplaying with a pc or two in their safe little bubble. I think since it's a brand new game, maybe we should force the player population to interact with eachother more with public areas, or it could turn into PC's just hanging around in their exclusive houses all the time. Happened alot in atonement/parallel.

“Then he called him Maeglin, which is Sharp Glance, for he perceived that the eyes of his son were more piercing than his own, and his thought could read the secrets of hearts beyond the mist of words.”

I guess I'll issue an apology for having used profanity on my character. I figured that these were salt-of-the-earth rough-and-tumble frontiersmen, and that things could be a little grittier than in a city like Minas Tirith.

Also, let's not kid ourselves -- Tolkein was a hardcore Catholic of many decades ago, a much more traditional time. I think it's highly likely that homosexuality doesn't figure into his writings because he disapproved of it as a whole. I'm not saying we should enforce his values, as modern sensibilities are obviously different, but I think we should acknowledge we're probably diverging from the spirit of the source material.

I'll also issue a vote in favor of player housing. I think it really fits the frontier-settlement theme, and I don't see how rooms at an inn are any less likely to cause people to cloister themselves off. Some degree of personal space is necessary; eventually we're going to start having too much stuff to haul it all around on our backs all the time.

I think it also provides something for people to work towards, and a greater amount of investment in both setting and character. It also provides a use and revenue stream for a lot of crafts (like earthenware) that might otherwise be largely useless.

Erythil wrote:I guess I'll issue an apology for having used profanity on my character. I figured that these were salt-of-the-earth rough-and-tumble frontiersmen, and that things could be a little grittier than in a city like Minas Tirith.

This might be best moved to the other thread, but the issue, I think, isn't so much swearing itself (there is no reason not to add color to the characters' language of these rough-and-tumble frontiersmen) so much as the choice of vocabulary in swearing.

I wouldn't mind seeing a NPC on the docks that buys fish. Fishing has quite a long timer, and in comparison to hunting where you're able to hunt game that you don't scout or flush out yourself, you're limited to at best getting one fish roughly every hour. I'm assuming that the inn will buy fish either cleaned or butchered, but much of the inn's balance is tied up with the hunters selling meat. If this idea of a fish monger or someone else buying fish is too much, it can likewise be offset by the need to clean them first.